I enjoy
being in a crowded bar on Friday night with a belly full of IPA and screaming,
along with everyone in the place, as JasonBay ties up a losing game
with an out-of-nowhere homer
off of Mariano Rivera with two outs in the ninth — and then screaming even
louder as Kevin
Youkilis wins it with a walk-off two innings later.

My Yankee
hate has atrophied in recent years. It’s time to ramp it back up. Let’s do
this.

* Mr. Joba
Chamberlain best watch himself. If he unleashes
a high one at Youk’s head again, this
guy’s gonna charge the mound. Either that or he’ll untwist the top from his
big ol’ jar filled with midges.

I know the Globe has problems these days, but if they can find a way to hang on to Adam Kilgore, it would be a good thing. His Extra Bases post today is the first sensible thing I've read about this team since the season started. He's one of few mainstream newspaper reporters to use more advanced metrics, and, as a result, he's able to contextualize the team's early struggles in a way that goes beyond simply looking at the baseball-card numbers, which really aren't that meaningful at this point in the year.

First off, good for the Red Sox for getting out in front of the weather and postponing early, rather than letting everyone drive down, pay for parking, sit around in the cold and rain for hours (all while shelling out more and more cash for hot dogs, beer, etc.) and then postponing the game two hours after the start time.

We're posting our predictions anyway, though, just so we can get on record. The usual disclaimers apply: predictions are, ultimately, a silly, meaningless exercise, and when you're trying to guess at things like individual award-winners, there's really just no point to it. But it's kind of fun, also, so why not.

As Wally
fluffs his fur after a winter-long hibernation and the Sausage
Guy scrubs down his grill, the Boston
baseball season gets set to commence on Monday afternoon. (We’ll be live-blogging
the 2:05 p.m. game right here at Sox Blog.)